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Zwani
Zwani '''is a language spoken in the Zwan Kingdom (Zwanas Davigulús), where it is the sole official language of it's entire population of 43 million people. ' General information Zwani is a synthetic nominative-accusative head-initial language. It is an Imanith language with large influences from Turkish and Spanish, and with smaller, but noticeable, influences from Armenian, Polish, and, more recently, English. Word order is generally SVO, but the subject pronoun can be dropped given that it is personal, not polypersonal, and in the nominative case. Verbs conjugate for person, number, tense, aspect, mood, and voice. Nouns decline for case and number. Pronouns decline for gender, number, case, and person. History Modern Zwani has been standardized since the Zwan Kingdom became a constitutional diarchy in 1914. Before this, multiple dialects of Zwani and multiple other Imanith languages were spoken throughout the Kingdom. It was written in the constitution that any official language needed to be standardized by the government, and the first comprehensive grammar of Zwani was commisioned. Many other Imanith languages are still spoken regionally within the kingdom, but few, if any, have more than a million speakers. The notable influence of so many languages on Zwani is due to the many odd alliances, mostly with far-away nations, the Zwan people had throughout their history, many of which still stand to this day. The language is different from Middle Zwani, which fell out of usage sometime in the mid-1700s, due to the large number of Turkish and Spanish loans, the loss of dual number, the extreme simplification of verb conjugation, the loss of ejective stops and affricates, the higher rate of affixing, the complete loss of the Vocative case (where it would be used historically, the nominative case is now used), the merging of the partitive and genetive cases, and the merging of the dative and the benefactive cases among other small differences. Phonology 'Consonants' *A nasal consonant can assimilate to a labiodental or dental before labiodental or dental consonant, but these nasals are not seperate phonemes. Similarly, before a voiced consonant, /θ/ becomes /ð/, but it isn't a seperate phoneme. *The letters ''X ''and ''Q may appear in loan words, and are pronounced /ks/ and /k/ respectively. 'Vowels' Monopthongs Dipthongs All dipthongs can combine with j or w to form a syllable nucleus. In a dipthong, /u/ can be represented with either ‹u› or ‹w›. Similarly, /i/ can be represented by either ‹i› ‹y›. Dipthongs are always stressed and defy normal stress rules. 'Alphabet' 'Phonotactics' The syllable structure is (C₁)(C₂)V(C₂)(C₁). Stop-fricative and fricative-stop clusters are permitted both syllable-initially and syllable-finally as long as they agree in voicing. C₁ can be either a stop or fricative when C₂ is a liquid /l ɾ r/ approximant /j w/. Stop-nasal clusters cannot occur syllable-initially but nasal-stop clusters can occur syllable-finally if they agree in place of articulation. Primary stress is placed on the first syllable of a word and secondary stress is placed on the last syllable of a word in two syllable words and the penultimate syllable in three or more syllable words. Stress affects vowel pronounciation, illustrated in the table below. Grammar 'Pronouns' Pronouns are highly irregular and do not follow normal declension patterns as other nouns do. Zwani is a pro-drop language so nominative pronouns are usually omitted. However, 3rd person pronouns are usually not omitted if the gender distinction is necessary. Pronouns in the 3rd person show natural gender and do not agree with the grammatical gender of a noun. 'Verbs' Verbs in Zwani are highly complex, and conjugate for three tenses, two aspects, and two moods (three in the present tense). However, there are no irregular verbs. Infinitives end in ''-ék'' and verb stems take on different endings to convey information. One-letter stems (such as sék) conjugate slightly different than stems that are one (or more) syllable (such as éśék ''or ''lenék) The passive voice is expressed periphrastically similarly to English. Certain moods, also, such as the conditional, are expressed periphrastically. The verb anék ''- to make - is conjugated below. Present Tense Past Tense Future Tense Participles 'Nouns' Declension Nouns in Zwani have three genders, each of which decline differently. Feminine nouns end in a front vowel, neutral nouns end in a back vowel, and masculine nouns end in a consonant. Nouns decline for six cases: nominative, accusative, dative, genetive, insturmental, and locative. *The '''nominative '''case marks the subject. *The '''accusative '''case marks the direct object of a clause, but also that of a preposition. *The '''dative '''case marks the indirect object, but also functions as a benefactive case, and marks the object of almost all non-locative preposition. *The '''genetive '''case shows possession or apposition, but also functions as a partitive case. *The '''insturmental '''case marks an object being used for something. This can be using an object to do something (ex: i write ''with the pencil) or using a place for a gathering (ex: we had a party at my house). ''Using the locative case for the latter construction is considered uneducated. *The '''locative '''case marks location in at or on something. There is no distinction between the three other than context. It is also used to mark certain locative prepositions, but not all. Feminine declension Neuter declension Masculine declension Masculine declensions are pretty straight-forward and do not require any truncating whatsoever. Nouns instead, essentially, suffix case endings. Determiners Determiners preceed the noun the modify and decline as adjectives. There is no indefinite article. The noun is assumed indefinite if there isn't a determiner suffixed onto it. 'Modifiers' Adjectives All native adjectives end in a consonant. They precede the noun they modify, can take on a comparative or superlative suffix, and agree with it's case. Adjectives do not agree with noun gender. Adverbs Adverbs, like adjectives, preceed the verb they modify. To derive an adverb from an adjecitve, suffix ''-au, ''prior to declension. Vocabulary 'Zwani Dictionary at ConWorkShop (updated frequently)' Greetings Numbers Numbers in Zwani almost completely irregular from 0-99. Numbers past 100 are formed simply: by multiplication and addition. A base, such as ''azac (hundred), cannot represent 100 by itself. Because of this, ef is needed in order to represent 100, resulting in efazac. Two vowels next to each other from forming larger numbers are pronounced with a hiatus. The suffix -''wu'' is added to denote ordinal numbers. Adverbial numbers (once, twice, thrice) are formed by the suffix ''-lu.'' Mathematics Many math words in Zwani are loans from Turkish. These are verbs and are conjugated as such. In Zwani, numbers are treated as third-person nouns. Example Text Category:Languages